SPORTS NOTE: Wow. Tough, tough series loss for the Sharks. It’s going to be a loooooong off-season.

“Oh, crap, they’re home. And the pizza guy hasn’t even shown up yet.”

Yet another Hump Day wanders grumpily off into the desert of posterity…

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird in a warped plastic bubble…! It’s a plane with cut-rate printing on its cheap cardboard backing…!

No…it’s Specialman!

Farewell, Bob Hoskins, one of my favorite actors. We should have had another twenty years out of you, sir, but what you’ve left us is still wonderful.

“Well, I don’t get it.” He looked around again, worried about celestial spies, I guess. “What’s the point? If the Highest wants people to be good, why doesn’t He just make them good?”

“There you go.” I put down my coffee cup and sat back. The day had gone a bit gray and windy, the pennants whipping above the ferry dock. “You just said the magic word—you win a hundred bucks.”

“Huh?”

“You just discovered one of the benefits of being embodied. I’ve been going back and forth to Heaven for years, and I don’t remember once having a conversation like that up there. Nobody up there asks questions. Maybe you can’t even do it without a body.”

“I don’t get it.”

“None of us do. The ways of God are mysterious, and so on. And even if none of us remembers what we were like when we were alive, or what we believed in, obviously we know the truth now, and it’s pretty much exactly what most people expected. As to the whys and wherefores, I’ve got a question for you.”

It took him a moment. “Uh… yeah?”

“What makes you think there isn’t more to come? Maybe we’re only seeing as much of the answer as we can grasp—maybe we only know as much about the real Heaven as a three-year-old knows about quantum physics.”

He looked a little shaken. “That’s a weird idea, Mr. Dollar.”

“I’m a weird idea kind of guy.”

— Tad Williams, THE DIRTY STREETS OF HEAVEN

Me to my wingman: “Hey, yours is the brunette. That blonde cutie is all mine!”

Stand up for the little guys.

I’ve probably posted this before, because it’s…well, it’s pretty much the kind of thing you’d expect to see here. But I’ve never had anyone translate the writing. Anybody know what’s on the box?

PS I am in no way encouraging either suicide or sequins.

Words are easy. Writing is hard.

I just received a piece of spam with the headline, “Horrible Phalluses Strong” and the sub-heading, “Tucked anger.”

I don’t know what it means exactly, but I’m not going anywhere near their neighborhood.

Caption contest. The prize is an enhanced sense of self-worth. What’s the guy on the left saying to the guy on the right?

I just finished reading the Desert Island Author comments, all three-hundetty-something of them. Fun and informative. Thanks for answering. To me it seems a tormenting question, which is why I was curious what writer you folks would grasp at in the tragedy of losing all others.

I can’t actually think of a scenario where that would happen, though. Which is good. I find the idea of being deprived of a lot of things horrifying, but being deprived of reading might well be the worst thing you could do to me (among things not involving actual pain to myself or others).

Sweet dreams, everybody!

If you could only take the works of one writer to a desert island, who would that writer be? I doubt anyone would be so foolish as to choose me (although my word-count isn’t bad if you want bulk fill) but just in case, I remove myself from consideration.

Seriously. One writer, all of her or his written work. Names?

Long day. Lots of work early, said goodbye to mother-in-law (we miss her already), then off to son’s play — Oklahoma, good job, son excellent — and then off so the kids could hang out in the diner ’til odd hours. (Their version of cast parties.) Dropped off several young people, just wandered in. Now wondering why I am still sitting upright. So, in a moment, not going to be.